Climate and Ecological Debt

[AnthonyAú]

Platform - Green Party US
  Section III. Ecological Sustainability
        A. Climate Change
              Declare a Climate Emergency

The key policies and programs in this program should include the following:

Climate and Ecological Debt

Acknowledge and pay the climate and ecological debt the U.S. has incurred as the world's largest historical carbon emitter and destroyer of carbon-storing forests, wetlands, and soils.

The U.S. climate debt is not only due to its historical emissions.

It is part of a broader ecological debt from the destruction of carbon-storing forests, soils, and wetlands by the resource-extracting foreign corporations of the Global North that have expropriated the resources, destroyed the biodiversity, and impoverished the people of the Global South.

We in the U.S. are linked to this destruction of biodiversity by the globalization of supply chains and trade.

This ecologically unequal exchange exploits the rainforests, agricultural lands, and fisheries of the Global South to provide wood, palm oil, and other food and fiber products to the rich countries.

The U.S. is the world's biggest importer of the tropical products of the Global South, which means the U.S. is the top destroyer of carbon-storing and ecosystem-stabilizing biodiversity.

Paying this climate and ecological debt would not only be reparations to the Global South to help those countries make the transition to sustainable clean energy economies.

Paying this debt is also an investment in the habitability of the planet for everyone.